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Fear, fear, and more fear

 Yesterday, I came into contact with a few people associated with a cancer hospital, and I asked them what the best way out is for the people suffering from terminal cancer who have no scope of recovery. Treatment of cancer is costly due to expensive machines and the short useful life of the machines. I asked them about the possibilities of shifting to alternative therapies such as naturopathy. As I understood from their replies, at the terminal stage, there is a lot of suffering because the cancerous cells are growing and constantly hitting the healthy part of the body. Therefore, they administer morphine to reduce the pain. At the last stage, it is all about minimizing the pain.

On the other hand, a few years back, I read the book "Dying to be me" by Anita Moorjani, a person of Indian origin who got cancer, and her treatment took place in Singapore. When doctors told her husband that she was not going to survive beyond a few hours, she had a near-death experience where she realized that the reason for her illness was long-standing fear. The moment she overcame that fear, she miraculously recovered within a week. Her recovery is well documented. The following is the link to one of her famous videos where she provides insights into her experiences:

https://youtu.be/snV0pXF1i8U?si=y5_6SfNjZph3y1Z9 

She is basically saying that the body has immense power to heal automatically, without any external intervention. Our fears do not allow our bodies to heal. We are afraid because we have awareness of a very limited portion of the whole of reality. She has compared the reality with a huge warehouse which has a large number of compartments, and we are in one of those compartments with our headlight on. Our vision is limited to that compartment, and if we experience any trouble in that compartment, we are full of fear. However, suddenly the lights of the entire warehouse are on, and we have a glimpse of the infinite reality. We realize that our fears are due to our limited awareness. Awareness helps us come out of the fears, and the immunity starts working, and we get cured. We explore the infinite possibilities. She also says that she had a vision of addressing a huge crowd when she was recovering, and she was surprised because she had never addressed a public gathering in her life before that. Now she is a well-known public speaker. All the possibilities are open for exploration. It just requires awareness of our limited understanding of reality. 

Unfortunately, we are mostly stuck on our limited understanding of life. Our minds keep calculating and planning for the future. We hardly ever know what is good or bad for us. Was going to the forest for 14 years bad for Rama? Ramayana could not have been written had he opted not to go. Was going to fight Kansa bad for Krishna? He would have played life long in Vrindavan. Was he being thrown out of the train by a white bad for Mahatma Gandhi? He would have remained an ordinary advocate the whole of his life. Life offers immense opportunities. We remain confined to the domain of the known. We keep calculating "good" and "bad" with our limited understanding of life unless we are pushed by the "divine" to explore. Why do we need that "push" in the form of disasters and emergencies? We can suo moto explore new possibilities of life. We can just be aware of the limitations of "what we know," and the entire domain of the "unknown" is wide open for us to explore. 

Despite knowing very well that fear is just a creation of ignorance, we allow fear to overcome us and restrict our possibilities. Sometimes, we get so obsessed with fear that we even fall sick. We come across many people who are so cut off from reality and so afraid that they pass on these fears to the people they interact with in one form or another. Some try to convince others about their "limited outlook" so that others too become depressed, and they get a false sense of security. Some pass on these fears in the form of aggression by demeaning the people lower in ranks, being aggressive in behaviour, and threatening them with consequences. They are the carriers of cancer in this society. On the other hand, some people have a wider framework of life, and every discussion with them broadens our perspective of life. Sometimes, we have a "choice of company" and it is no "rocket science" to understand which company is "good" for us, and an intelligent human being will choose the right company where they will get a broader perspective of life. Sometimes, we do not have a choice of the company, but we do have a choice of being a "witness" rather than being affected by foul behaviour. Observing such aggressive people makes us realize the ugliest forms of fear. It's like going to a hospital and observing the patients with lifestyle diseases and developing a firm determination for a healthy lifestyle. 



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